Table of Contents

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CBS News Monthly Poll, December 2009 (ICPSR 30408)

Principal Investigator(s):CBS News

Summary:

This poll, fielded December 17-22, 2009, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on a range of political and social issues. Respondents were asked how they felt about the future of the United States over the next few years, whether they thought their opportunities to succeed in life were better or worse than their parent's generation, how satisfied they were with their life, and what major ambition or dream they would like to accomplish over the next 10 years. Respondents were queried on how they wo... (more info)

This poll, fielded December 17-22, 2009, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on a range of political and social issues. Respondents were asked how they felt about the future of the United States over the next few years, whether they thought their opportunities to succeed in life were better or worse than their parent's generation, how satisfied they were with their life, and what major ambition or dream they would like to accomplish over the next 10 years. Respondents were queried on how they would rate the condition of the national economy, and how concerned they were that they or someone in the household would be out of work in the next year. Respondents were also asked what grade they would give to the United States in finding a cure for AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease, in ensuring the safety of the nation's food supply, and the quality of the public schools, in its ability to protect the country from a terrorist attack, its efforts to combat obesity, in its progress in protecting the environment, in the condition of the military, and in the nation's technological innovation compared to other countries. Information was collected on what was more important to the respondent, stimulating the economy or protecting the environment, whether they would be willing to pay more for a product if they knew it would be better for the environment, and how much confidence they had that advances in technology will solve global warming and other threats to the environment. Respondents were asked how likely they thought it was that there would be anther terrorist attack in the United States within the next few months, how secure they thought the country's ports and harbors were from terrorist activity, whether they thought that obesity was a serious public health problem, whether they would like to lose or gain weight, whether they support or oppose a special tax on junk food, and whether they thought that a special tax on junk food would encourage more people to lose weight. Respondents were queried on whether they had teenagers that they thought have tried illegal drugs and prescription drugs to get high, whether they thought that their teenaged children were sexually active, whether they thought that their teenagers have sent or received sexually explicit messages or images through their mobile phone, and whether they thought that their teenagers were overweight. Information was collected on how much free time their teenagers spent on the Internet, whether they monitor what their teenagers are doing online, whether their teenagers have been threatened or bullied online, whether they give their teenagers allowance, whether their teenagers work, and whether their teenagers have chores. Respondents were asked whether they favor or oppose divorce as a solution if the marriage isn't working out, whether they know anyone who has been unfaithful to their spouse, and whether they feel torn between their job and their family. Finally, respondents were also asked if they thought that we should return to a military draft, whether they thought that the United States military was adequately prepared to respond to a new military threat, whether public schools should teach a course on the major religions of the world, and how often they went to the theater to see a movie. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, marital status, education level, household income, employment status, military service, religious preference, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, political philosophy, and voter registration status.

Universe:
Persons aged 18 years and older living in households with telephones in the United States.

Data Types:
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.

The CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.

Truncated value label in variables Q98 and EDUC were corrected.

This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.

Methodology

Sample:
A variation of random-digit dialing (RDD) using primary sampling units (PSUs) was employed, consisting of blocks of 100 telephone numbers identical through the eighth digit and stratified by geographic region, area code, and size of place. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. Within households, respondents were selected using a method developed by Leslie Kish and modified by Charles Backstrom and Gerald Hursh (see Backstrom and Hursh, SURVEY RESEARCH. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1963).

Weight:
The data contain weight variables that should be used in analyzing the data. According to the CBS News Web site, the data were weighted to match United States Census Bureau breakdowns on age, sex, race, education, and region of the country. The data were also adjusted for the fact that people who share a telephone with others have less chance to be contacted than people who live alone and have their own telephones, and that households with more than one telephone number have more chances to be called than households with only one telephone number.

Mode of Data Collection:
telephone interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: